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Thursday, July 15, 2010

Unrestricted vs Restricted Free Agents

We here at LLU would like to educate you on the meaning of unrestricted and restricted free agents. Today the question was asked and the sudden brain fart hazed my memory. There is no need to text anyone for the answer, we have the explanation below thanks to my friend Wikipedia.

There are two types of free agency under the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement: Unrestricted and Restricted. An unrestricted free agent is free to sign with any team, but a restricted free agent is subject to his current team's Right of First Refusal, meaning that the player can be signed to an offer sheet by another team, but his current club reserves the right to match the offer and keep the player. An offer sheet is a contract offer of at least 1 year made to a restricted free agent. The player's current club has 7 days to match the offer or loses the player to the new team. For 1st-round draft picks, restricted free agency is only allowed after a team exercises its option for a fourth year, and the team makes a Qualifying Offer at the Rookie-scale amount after the fourth year is completed. For any other player to be a restricted free agent, he must be at most a three-year NBA veteran, and his team must have made a Qualifying Offer for either 125% of his previous season's salary or the minimum salary plus $175,000, whichever offer is higher.